


Nothing More Unexpected

by astralis



Category: Malory Towers - Enid Blyton
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-07 14:55:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8805265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astralis/pseuds/astralis
Summary: Moira. June. Three moments, three conversations, all unexpected.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xsabrix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xsabrix/gifts).



Moira raised her hand to knock on the door to the second form dormy, and stopped as a sudden pang came over her. What fun they’d had here, in her own second form days! There had been the midnight feast which had made Josie sick and the complicated game of Mary’s own invention that they had spent quite three weeks playing before bed and the nightly whispers which not even their dormy prefect had put a stop to.

For the first time Moira wondered how things had all gone so very wrong. It was true that she’d never been exactly popular, had never had more than one or two special friends - and after Mary had gone to Australia with her family she had had none - but she had not been as openly disliked as she’d become. Miss Grayling’s words echoed in her head - “Not a very pretty picture, is it, Moira? But I think you know that, and you have made the first step towards making good. For the second, I want you to go and find June in the dormitory and bring her here to me. You may tell her that she is not to be expelled, and why.”

Swallowing one’s pride was never easy, and particularly not for someone as strong-willed and proud as Moira Linton, but having made the first step she meant to go on. She raised her hand a second time and this time she knocked sharply on the door.

There was no answer, which Moira found unsurprising. Miss Grayling and Matron had given the second formers leave to stay up late in order that they not witness June’s final devastating moments at Malory Towers, and while some, like Felicity Rivers, had sought comfort from older sisters, the rest were in the common room where they were no doubt failing to enjoy their reprieve from bed. She opened the door.

All the overhead lights blazed bright in the almost empty dormy. Moira closed the door behind her and walked the length of the room, past the neatly made beds and the dressers with a photo of each girl’s family to where June sat on the floor near the end of the room. With a start Moira realized that June’s bed had once been her own. There Mary had slept; there Catherine; there Helen. 

It had not been nearly as long ago as it felt.

“What are you doing here?” June snarled as Moira approached. Her eyes were red, her cheeks tear-stained, and the last of her pride blazed out as defiance.

For a moment, confronted by this sad spectacle of second form life, Moira was at a loss for words. Then she took a breath, and plunged into the deep end. “I have come to apologise. I was awful to you and the whole form, and my own form as well. What you did was wrong - but I was wrong too.” This was only the second time in her life that Moira had admitted wrongdoing, and the first was in Miss Grayling's office. They were painful words - but the right ones. She recognised that fact in the way that the words seemed to soothe her twisting stomach.

June wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “Thanks. I think. Small comfort.”

Today Moira would ignore the tone and resist a lecture on defiance. There was something to be said for seeing beyond the facade girls like June were always putting up - and the inability to do so was possibly one of her greatest weaknesses. Moira was facing a lot of that tonight. If she had been Darrell or Sally perhaps she would have known the right way, the best way to deal with June - but she wasn't, and she had only her own imperfect words. “Miss Grayling has asked me to bring you to her, but she wanted me to tell you first that you are not to be expelled tonight.” She spoke carefully, knowing that might be one of the most important things that June had ever heard. Moira had a sense of dignity, often lost in her dealing with the people around her, and tonight that shone stronger than ever.

June’s eyes brightened as she gasped for breath. “Moira - really?” she exclaimed, sounding like an entirely different young lady.

“Yes. I told her that I had driven you to it. That it was my fault, as much as yours.” As painful as the circumstances were, it was a lovely thing to be able to give good news, and to know that you had actually done something to help something, and Moira drew strength from that.

June seemed to skip over Moira's admission of fault, though no doubt she would give it due consideration later! For now, she had more pressing concerns on her mind. “Has she - did she tell my people that I was to be expelled?”

That was a question Moira couldn’t answer for sure. At the very least the incident would be on June's report - and her part of it, on hers! She would not look forward to facing the father and mother who had always done their very best for their two brash, ungrateful daughters - but perhaps she could also tell them what she had done to make it right, and that would ease the pain of knowing what a failure Moira had turned out to be. “I don’t know. But come along with me and find out,” she said, before the fifth former and prefect in her made her own contribution to the conversation. “You might like to wash your face and brush your hair first, though.”

June actually smiled then, a genuine smile such that Moira had only seen at the end of a rousing game of hockey. “Do I look a total fright?”

“You do, rather," Moira said, doing her level best to keep her voice steady. She wanted, suddenly, to laugh, and thought better of it.

“Then I ought to,” said June, standing with shaking legs. “Before I lose my nerve I should say - I am awfully sorry, Moira. I didn’t realise that what I was doing was so very bad until Miss Potts explained it to me. I understood that I was being nasty, and I meant to make you feel bad - but I didn’t mean to be as bad as I was.” She faced Moira, her gaze direct. June was always so very brave - often too brave - but today it had served her well.

“Neither did I,” said Moira. It could so easily have been her or Bridget that had ended up doing such a thing in anger! She understood how it could happen and she thought that perhaps Miss Grayling did too. How many girls had passed through these halls, walked into that office? Were she and June perhaps the worst of them? Could they become - perhaps - the sort of girls that Malory Towers remembered in fondness, rather than sadness? That was not something she had cared about before, and it was a desire that might fade a little in the days and weeks to come, but in that moment that school spirit took root a little in Moira.

She waited until June had washed up and then together they walked to Miss Grayling’s office for what would be the most sobering interview either would ever have at Malory Towers.

*

June Johns was not the type to take solemn speeches from older cousins to heart. Rather, that devil-may-care character that had stayed with June, and perhaps always would, had been briefly impressed by Alicia’s words and as a consequence was resenting them all the more now. Why, Alicia couldn’t talk! Everyone knew she was most the cutting person in the Sixth, and in every other form she had been in, too! And how many times had she brought out her Punishment Book for the tiniest sins June had committed, to make a show of assigning some long poem to be read in humiliation in the sixth form common room? Just because it was Alicia's last day of school - and how lucky for her - she had taken to talking with the superior manner of the rest of her form!

Pleasantly forgetting for that moment that she, June, had done things many times more dreadful than Alicia could have even contemplated, that young lady resolved to go about her way at Malory Towers in the manner that seemed best and most enjoyable to her. She wasn’t expecting her people for another hour at least - they were always some of the last to arrive - and so June decided she would head down to the pool. She always liked it there and what was more, it would keep her out of the way of Matron and any mistresses who might decide that June was exactly the right girl to fetch and carry or to run messages.

June was not to be as lucky as she’d expected, though. There, in the glorious silence, contemplating the pool and the rocks and the sea beyond, was none other than Moira Linton.

After what had happened last year, a tenuous understanding had grown between Moira and June. It was not exactly a liking, but June still had warmer feelings towards Moira than she did the rest of the Sixth. Moira was the only one of them whom June had ever seen acknowledge her own failings - the rest spent their time riding around on their high horses! Moira's actions and words on the night she had saved June from expulsion still carried a lot of weight with June and even when she wanted to dislike Moira, she could not. June felt that she knew her too well - in fact, better than she had wanted to know Moira! Now she couldn't help but see Moira as more human than sixth former.

All the same, she hadn’t wanted, particularly, to see Moira again today. They had seen each other in passing at breakfast; Moira had said "Do keep working at your swimming, June," and June had nodded, that seeming like a perfectly reasonable and even pleasant good-bye - but now Moira had heard her coming and looked around, and it was too late. June set her chin, and carried on down the last few steps. “Hello.”

“Hello. If you’re looking for quiet, I won’t be long.”

June shrugged. “I didn’t take you for the sort to go around saying good-bye to everything,” she said, something in her wanting to break this stillness and peace. Stillness and peace were things that June only liked when she didn't have to share them with anyone.

The old Moira might have pulled out her Punishment Book for that sort of comment. Now she just shrugged. “I wouldn’t have thought so either, but the place does grow on you. And this is the very best part of it.”

“I shan’t be sad to leave," June said. The big wide world was beckoning her, and Malory Towers was a cage from which she dreamed of escaping.

“I didn’t expect to be either. But six years does go by rather quickly, you know.”

“So much the better.”

Moira laughed. “You say that now," she said, in the exasperatingly knowing manner all sixth formers had.

June didn't like it. “Are you going to preach at me like Alicia did?”

“Alicia, preaching?”

“Darrell started it.”

“Of course she did,” Moira said. “She’s a very good head girl.”

“Nobody likes to be preached at. I doubt she would have liked it when she was lower school either.”

“Don’t think of it as preaching, then. Think of it as inspiration.”

June didn’t much want to be inspired either - not by Alicia! It was better to just go out and do the things you wanted to do, the things you were good at, without all the words and good thoughts. She said nothing. Suddenly, she didn't want to argue with Moira. Her people would be here soon, and perhaps Moira's too, and after everything not even June wanted things to end on a bad note.

“Think of it this way,” Moira said. “Do you want to leave Malory Towers with regrets, June? Because it’s not very pleasant.” Moira shrugged her shoulders, getting no response from June. “Perhaps I ought to go preach at Bridget?”

“That seems to be the done thing." June was biting her tongue, holding to her previous thought.

Moira turned away from the sea view. “I shall, then. Are you coming back up to school?”

“No,” June said. “I’m going to stay here a little longer.”

“Best of luck with everything, then.”

“You too.” June stood, her eyes fixed on the waves crashing into the rocks, and waited until Moira was almost at the stairs. “Thank you,” she said, and wondered if her voice had been loud enough for Moira to hear.

Maybe - just this once! - she should have been louder.

*

With every twist and turn of the narrow Cornish road, Moira wondered what she was doing and what had possessed her to agree to this. Certainly, the hundredth birthday of one’s old school was a great occasion, the sort of thing that old girls more community-minded than Moira had probably been anticipating for at least a decade. But she had not been particularly happy at Malory Towers, something she’d understood more since she’d left than she had while she’d been there. A lot of that was her fault, and she’d tried to pass that knowledge on to Bridget and June so that they shouldn’t leave with the regrets that she had - but really, this was not the sort of thing that she’d expected to be doing with her time, at this point of her life. She had a full life, a good life, one with which she was content, and perhaps it was best to let sleeping dogs lie and to leave childhood memories undisturbed by adult reality.

But Bridget was going - rather unexpectedly! She and her friend Connie had even been on the planning committee for what Moira understood to be one small part of the celebrations, and as a result she had become rather passionately interested in the whole affair and had talked about nothing but for weeks on end. Moira could guess who else was likely to be there - Darrell and Felicity, Sally, Alicia, Irene, Belinda - all the girls who had well and truly embraced life at school, for good or ill.

She hadn’t kept in touch, and wasn’t sure she wanted to see them.

Why, then, was she going? Was it some desire to prove to herself that she had finally grown beyond a girls’ school on the Cornish coast? A need to let everyone else know that she, Moira Linton, the least popular head girl any form had ever had, had actually made something of her life? Or was it just to make Bridget happy, because the sisterly bond that had been lacking in their school days had grown once they were both set free of routine and regulation?

Moira had no answer, but she had filled in her acceptance form, arranged lodging in the town, and set out in her small car for Cornwall. 

There was the old school, appearing around a curve in the manner of fairytale castles. From this distance little seemed changed, but Moira had heard of rewiring, of better electricity and updated bathrooms, that plans were afoot to, some day in the distant future, when the money was there and the plans approved, remodel the existing towers to change the large, noisy dormitories into smaller rooms for two or four girls. The future was hitting Malory Towers, but Malory Towers was not yet, she thought, quite ready or willing to meet it.

Moira was directed to a parking spot on the lacrosse field by a small freckled girl in a school uniform a size too big. She stopped where indicated, and got out. An unfamiliar woman, probably one who had been in the lower school or not yet started when Moira left, walked past her, holding hands with two small children: “Yes, this is where Mummy went to school… right in that building over there… no I don’t think you’ll go here one day darling, it’s very expensive and I don’t think you would much like it anyway…”

Moira set her shoulders and followed the woman and her children up to the school, wishing with each step that she had had the sense to stay away. As they got closer the noise grew louder; the constant chatter that Moira remembered had packed the dining room, cluttered the corridors, filled the common rooms. She registered at a wobbly-looking plastic table, manned by more bright-eyed but slightly intimidated youngsters and then stood, out of the way and at a loss, looking around her at the endless faces.

There was Miss Grayling, retired now, walking with the aid of a cane. Moira would go to her, later. But not now. She was passed by three woman who might, she thought, have been a few forms below her and in South Tower, and then by a sea of faces that perhaps she ought to remember, but did not. And there was Mary-Lou, looking older but otherwise unchanged.

Moira went over. Mary-Lou was alone, and it was rather awkward to just stand around with no one to talk to, so they could join forces for the moment at least. “Hello.”

For one awful moment, Mary-Lou’s eyes betrayed confusion. But she recovered herself, recognizing Moira, and held out a hand. “Moira!” she said, sounding genuinely pleased. “How nice to see you.”

Moira shook hands. “You look well.”

“Thank you. As do you. I just got here, have you seen any of the others?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, they’ll be here. I know an awful lot of them were coming. Tell me what you’re doing now, Moira.”

“Nothing exciting,” Moira said, wishing she had not begun this conversation. Of course Mary-Lou was still in touch with everyone, and no doubt they would all be descending in delight once they saw her. “I teach maths and games at my local comprehensive. And you? Are you still nursing?”

“Yes, I am. I have a young son now but I believe it’s terribly important for women to work, and for boys to see that. And my career is very important to me, I believe I’m doing good work and I have worked too hard to get where I am to give it up now. My mother isn’t very pleased with me but at the same time she says that if I were to stop working she’d still want to keep Thomas during the day. So really I have been quite fortunate, all things considered.”

Moira noted no mention of a husband, and didn’t push. That might have been more words than Mary-Lou had said to her in the whole two years they’d shared a form. It sounded a little like a speech prepared for this particular occasion, but Moira couldn't blame her for that and wished she had done the same. “I wish I felt that way about my work,” she said, something in her responding to the passion in Mary-Lou's voice. “I realize it’s important to ensure children get a good education - but I feel that I could do something completely different tomorrow and it wouldn’t change a thing about my life.”

“Then perhaps you just haven’t found the right thing yet.”

“Maybe.”

They were swallowed up, then, by a group Moira hadn’t noticed coming towards them. She suspected they were coming for Mary-Lou more than to see her - but there was Alicia, her eyes sparkling, and Betty laughing, and Darrell and Bill talking at once, and Clarissa still with that utterly gorgeous hair. 

Moira was swept up. They walked through the school together, commenting on things that had changed, things that had stayed the same, talking all the time about their lives. Alicia was a barrister in London, Sally had three daughters but, like the woman from the field, she didn't think they would come to Malory Towers. “And my Annie would absolutely hate it, anyway. I wish I could send her to a music school, but that’s expensive too. Although Irene has some ideas about that!"

Some of Belinda’s art was on display in Manchester, some as part of a collection of caricatures at a small Parisian gallery; Irene was composing and conducting for a London orchestra, and they were always looking for ways to work together. It seemed they hadn’t quite found one yet. “But you will,” said Darrell, as they gathered in what had been the second form room. “And then you shall need someone to keep you both in line or nothing will get done!”

They’d all done so much with their lives. Moira’s dissatisfaction with her own life - the one she had been perfectly content with until she'd come down here to be reunited with more talented schoolfellows - twisted in her stomach and, when she could bear it no more, she hung back, letting the group move on without her. In this place she felt like that fifth former again, left down and left behind by the girls she'd begun her school career with, despised by the ones who had become her new classmates. It was an unpleasant sensation.

There was still time before the speeches. Moira doubled back and headed outside, her feet finding the familiar, worn path down to the pool. Darrell had said something about saving the pool for last - if Moira timed it right she could be gone from there before they arrived to collect her for more reminiscing.

Malory Towers was, she’d read, in the process of building a better pool as part of a new sports facility. It would be chlorinated and the temperature controlled, just right for swimming competitions and training, and as professional as befitted this kind of school. These days no one was allowed down to swim without a supervising mistress or prefects, and the safety rules printed on a big white board specifically prohibited pushing people in, a practice that Moira was inclined to think had caused a very small amount of good and a lot of distress, and wouldn’t let her students do on swimming days. Things really had changed while she'd been gone.

This pool, maybe the school's best and most unique feature, was to be maintained for recreational swimming only. It seemed rather a waste.

Moira bypassed a few smaller groups to walk towards the far edge of the pool, where she’d come on her last day to say her own kind of goodbye to Malory Towers. She’d been alone then - mostly - but today there was already someone standing there.

With a start, and with a kind of inevitability in her stomach, she recognized June Johns. She thought of leaving, but - June had seen her. “Moira. Hello.”

“Hello June.”

“Fancy seeing you here.”

“I didn’t expect to see you here today at all,” Moira said, falling in beside June. For a moment she was that sixth former again, finding it harder than expected to tear herself away from the world of school.

“I didn’t expect to be here. Nor did I expect to see you.”

“So it’s mutual, then," June said, her smile small and ironic. "Why did you come?”

“I have no idea. Bridget wanted me too, mostly, but I haven’t actually seen her yet. She was volunteering for something. Why are you here?”

June shrugged. “I guess I’m not the only person who left a piece of herself behind here. I often wonder who I would have been if I hadn’t come here.” She looked at Moira. “Do you know, I rather think I would have been nicer.”

“That’s not the Malory Towers spirit," Moira said, taken aback by the unexpected disclosure. June had changed - grown older - wiser, perhaps - but Moira still thought she saw that spark of defiance, the refusal to let others cage her in and the strength to spread her own wings and fly.

“Maybe not. But unhappy people aren’t particularly nice.”

“That’s true.”

June shook her head. Her face was fierce and in that moment she was, definitely, the girl Moira remembered, all fire and passion - misguided, maybe, but fire and passion all the same. “Anyway,” she said, “I’m here. You’re here. Malory Towers means more to both of us than either of us cares to admit. Am I right?”

“Probably.” 

June had never been one to respect her elders, to toe the line of decency laid out by school tradition. But now they were fifteen or twenty years free and clear of Malory Towers, and Moira welcomed the plain talking that had once only been done in anger.

Perhaps she had been right in coming here, to find out how much of Moira Linton had been left behind. She expected it was like that with any school. It gave things, and took others away. “You always were too smart for your own good,” she said.

“So I’ve been told. But it’s not being smart that’s the problem, is it? It’s being different. If I had kids I wouldn’t send them to a school like this. Not in a million years.”

“There’s more choices now,” Moira said, weighing the benefits of Malory Towers against those of the school where she taught and unsure she wanted to come to a conclusion.

“Right. If only our parents had had them, and made them for us.” June was eying the pool. “How I wish I could just dive right in. That’s what I miss, more than anything in the world, about this place.” She sighed. “I ought to thank you, anyway.”

“For what?” Moira asked, disconcerted by the change in direction.

“For saving me that night.”

“You did thank me.”

“Well, I’m thanking you again. As much as - as much as I didn’t always love it here - to be expelled then would have made things worse than I could have imagined. So I am grateful, now and then.”

“I couldn't let you be expelled. I was awful. And miserable - you won’t be surprised, I know,” Moira said, June's words about 'unhappy people' still lingering in her mind. She wondered what it was that made her talk like this, what urge needed to keep the conversation going.

“No. I’m not.”

Up at the school a bell was ringing, summoning the crowds to the speeches that were to be made, in celebration of a school that had changed so many lives, and for the better more than the worse - yes, even her own! “We ought to go,” Moira said, reluctantly, her eyes on June's profile and the sea beyond it.

“I expect so.”

Together, they turned towards the stairs, and the school, and the past. “Tell me,” Moira said, making conversation as they climbed, still from that same unnamed desire, “what are you doing now? Did you ever marry?” It was the standard conversation starter, even in this day and age, but not one that Moira Linton had ever been inclined to use before. She swallowed.

“No,” said June, firmly. “You?”

“No.” Moira recognized something in June’s voice and thought that maybe, later, it would be time to think about it. 

For now, they kept going.


End file.
